In the emerging art of three-dimensional (3D) video, various methods exist for encoding a third dimension into the video data signal. Generally this is done by providing a viewer's eye with different views of the scene being watched. A popular approach for representing 3D video is to use one or more two-dimensional (2D) images plus a depth representation providing information of the third dimension. This approach also allows 2D images to be generated with different viewpoints and viewing angles than the 2D images which are included in the 3D video signal. Such an approach provides a number of advantages including allowing further views to be generated with relatively low complexity and providing an efficient data representation thereby reducing, e.g., storage and communication resource requirements for 3D video signals. Preferably, the video data is extended with data that is not visible from the available viewpoints, but becomes visible from a slightly different viewpoint. This data is referred to as occlusion or background data. In practice, the occlusion data is generated from multiview data obtained by capturing a scene with multiple cameras at different viewpoints.
It is a problem of the above described approaches that the availability of data for reconstructing de-occluded objects in newly generated views may differ from frame to frame and even within a frame. As a result, the quality of images generated for different viewpoints may vary.